sauce
Americannoun
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any preparation, usually liquid or semiliquid, eaten as a gravy or as a relish accompanying food.
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stewed fruit, often puréed and served as an accompaniment to meat, dessert, or other food.
cranberry sauce.
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something that adds piquance or zest.
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Informal. sauciness; impertinence; impudence.
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Slang. Usually the sauce hard liquor.
He's on the sauce again.
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Archaic. garden vegetables eaten with meat.
verb (used with object)
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to dress or prepare with sauce; season.
meat well sauced.
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to make a sauce of.
Tomatoes must be sauced while ripe.
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to give piquance or zest to.
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to make agreeable or less harsh.
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Informal. to speak impertinently or saucily to.
noun
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any liquid or semiliquid preparation eaten with food to enhance its flavour
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anything that adds piquancy
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stewed fruit
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dialect vegetables eaten with meat
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informal impudent language or behaviour
verb
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to prepare (food) with sauce
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to add zest to
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to make agreeable or less severe
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informal to be saucy to
Other Word Forms
- oversauce verb (used with object)
- sauceless adjective
Etymology
Origin of sauce
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English, from Middle French, from Late Latin salsa, noun use of feminine of Latin salsus “salted,” past participle of sallere “to salt,” derivative of sāl “salt”; salt 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It favors whole grains, legumes, vegetables prepared with intention, and sauces that taste like someone cared.
From Salon
The crab cakes were our best bite, filled with loads of lump crab meat served with a horseradish cream sauce.
From Salon
She leans into the culinary metaphor when asked about her secret sauce.
From Los Angeles Times
I ordered a stir fry of crab and broken rice with greens and yam that came topped with a fried soft-shell crab drizzled with shito, a Ghanaian chili sauce.
They experimented internally with reducing the amount of cheese, mac and cheese’s costliest component, checking the effect on taste, texture, mouthfeel, cheesiness and “cling”—how the cheese sauce stuck to the noodles.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
